Like some sort of hack zombie, former Wyoming senator Alan Simpson has stumbled back onto the political stage, basking again in the media limelight and sounding off after putting his name on President Obama’s debt commission’s liberal dream prescription – increasing both taxes and the size of government.

This raises an important question:  Who the hell cares what Alan Simpson thinks?  The answer is that the mainstream media cares, for now, because his dreary conventional wisdom is useful to them – for the moment.

Simpson’s return to prominence in the wake of the conservative – not GOP – victory in the recent mid-terms is a harbinger of what we will see much of in the next couple years as MSM-approved “reasonable” and “mature” Republicans are dug-up and held-up as role models while Republicans who actually pursue conservative goals are painted as raving lunatics one step away from climbing up the bell tower with a Remington.

The 79-year old maverick (“Maverick”: A Republican who enjoys the hosannas of the press that come from attacking fellow Republicans.  Related Definition:  “Sell Out”:  A Democrat who worries about his party’s slide to the far left.) makes no bones about where his allegiance lies – with the kind of old-school, chummy, go-along, get-along Republicanism that got us into this mess in the first place.

Fortunately for us half-wits, he’s brave enough to face down our selfish, short-sighted attempts to interfere with his ability to implement his insights – and the media is only too happy to give this relic a soap box.  That is, until the label “useful idiot” becomes only half true.

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So CBS shows up and does Face The Nation from the Aspen Ideas Festival. Great idea. Perfect chance to talk to Eric Holder about the whistleblower who this week said Holder refused to prosecute a New Black Panther member because of his race.

I guess Bob Schieffer didn’t have time to ask that question. The media normally loves racially charged stories, but in this case, they must not have had time in the half-hour show, or perhaps CBS didn’t want to do the story, or perhaps CBS doesn’t even know about the story. Like the rest of the LAMBS in the old media they have had a hard time doing anything that might be negative towards the Obama Administration.

Holder did get a few laughs during the show, which was taped in front of a live audience. He didn’t want the laughs, did not intend to get the laughs—but the crowd thought he was funny.

When he danced around the British Petroleum lawsuit question the crowd roared in laughter. Schieffer thought it was an “unusual” thing that the Obama Administration seemed more interested in filing suit against BP to further harm the company, instead of presumably focusing on stopping the leak. Holder said he filed the suit, but “did not say who the subject of the investigation was.”  (Insert laugh track here.) Calm down Holder, you’re cracking us up out here! (more…)

Two very reliable web sites (Patterico and Politico) are reporting two different versions of the same basic story:  The identity of Ellie Light.

From Ben Smith:

Well, the mystery may be over. A woman who said her name was, in fact, Ellie Light called this morning into the radio show of Michael Smerconish, a national talker based in Philadelphia who has been friendly to Obama, to clear things up.

“I’m only me,” she said, identifying herself as a traveling nurse who works for 13-week stretches at hospitals around the country, and whose primary residence is in Southern California.

“I need to own up – I did misrepresent my home town in some places,” Light told Smerconish. Her logic in faking the addresses is one familiar to advocacy groups: “If I thought it was written by a neighbor of mine, I would give it more credence.” (more…)